, 1887-02-24
THE LAWS OF HABIT.


Inc Daily Drill and Its Enects-Habit
the F1ywheeI of Society.
DIR. Carpenter, from whose s,MentaI
Physiology" we have quoted, has so
prominently enforced the principle that
our organs grow to the way in which thew
have been exercised, and dwelt upon its
consequences, hat his book almost de-
serves to be called a work of ediication
on this account alone. We need make
no apology, then, for tracing a few of
these consequences ourselves:
"Habi a second nature! Habit is ten
times nature, " the Duke of wellington
Is said to have exclaimed; and the degree
&c which this ID true no one can probably
appreciate as well as one who in is a vet
eran soldier himself. The daily drill and
the years OF discipline end by f%ashioning
a man completely over again, as to most
OF the possibilities of his conduct. There
Is a story, which is credible enough.
though 1t may not be true, of a practical
Joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran
carrying home his dinner, suddenly called
out, Attention. w%hereupon the man
instantly brought his hands down, and
lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter.
The drill had been thorough, and its
effects had become embodied in the mans
nervous structure.
Riderless cavalry horses, at many a
battle, have been seen to come together
and go through their customary evolu-
tons at the sound of the bugle call.
Most trained domestic animals, dogs and
oxen and omnibus and CIR horses, seem
to be machines almost pure and simple,
undoubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from
minute to minute the duties they have
been taught, and giving no sign that the
possibility Of an alternative even suggests
itself to their mind. Men grown old in
prison have asked to be readmitted after
being ono set free. In a railroad acct
dent to a travelling managerie in the
United States some time in 1884, q tiger,
whose cage had been broken open, is said
to have emerged, but presently crept
a again, as if too much bewildered by
his new responsibilities, so that he was
without difficulty secured.
Habit is thus the enormous fywheel Of
society, its most precious conservative
agent. 1t alone is what keeps us all
within the bounds of ordinance, and
saves the children of fortune from the
envious uprisings of the poor. 1t alone
prevents the hardest and most repulsive
walks of life from being deserted by
those brought up to tread therein. 1t
keeps the fisherman and the deck hand
at sea through the winter; it holds the
miner in his darkness, and nails the
countryman to his log cabin and his
lonely farm through all the months of
snow; it protects us from invasion by
h natives of the desert and the frozen
zone. 1t dooms us all to fight out the
battle of life upon the lines of our nurt-
ure or u early choice, and to make the
best of a pursuit that disagrees, because
there is no other for which we are fitted,
and it is too late to begin again. 1t
keeps different social strata from mixing.
Already at the age of % you see the pro
fessional mannerism settling down on the
young commercial traveller, on the young
doctor, on the young minister, on the
young counselor at law. You see the
little lines of cleavage running through
the character; the tricks of thought, the
prejudices, the ways of the ''shop" in a
word, from which the man can by and
by no more escape than his Goa sleeve
can suddenly fall into a new set of folds.
On the whole, it is best he should not
escape. II is well for the world that in
most of us, by the g of 80, the char
acter has set like plaster, and will never
soften again.-William James in Popu-
lar Science Monthly.